Latter days gay movie
Queerly Ever After is a bi-monthly column where I take a look at LGBT+ films that gave their characters a amorous happily-ever-after. There will be spoilers. Also, don’t forget to purchase your Queerly Ever After merch right here.
It is also important that I include a content warning for suicide attempts in this article.
In this romantic dramedy, Christian (Wes Ramsey) a promiscuous youthful gay man, makes a gamble with his friends Julie (Rebekah Johnson), Andrew (Khary Payton), and Traci (Amber Benson) that he can seduce one of the four Mormon missionaries who just moved into his apartment complex. As proof of his victorious seduction, he promises to carry back the special underwear of his Mormon conquest.
Of course, favor other movies of this era that revolve around one ethics making a bet he or she can woo another, Christian ends up falling in devotion with his target, Elder Aaron Davis (Steve Sandvoss), who has been harboring the secret of his sexuality for years. The film’s writer/director C. Jay Cox, spent some of his youthful adulthood as a Mormon missionary, before comi
LATTER DAYS
Oh no, it&#;s another film about a religious good lad moving to the big bad metropolis and discovering that he&#;s gay. I know, it sounds awful in that we&#;ve seen this a gazillion times sense, but LATTER DAYS is a cut above the rest for its gentle message about finding the power to see other people, all people, with new eyes.
Steve Sandvoss, Wesley A Ramsey
Our case in point is Aaron (a strikingly wholesome Steve Sandvoss). He&#;s a thoughtful guy with the spirit of a poet, the face of a farmboy, and an attraction for his own sex that will only lead to trouble in La La Land, which is where he&#;s sent for his Mormon missionary work. He&#;s the type who sees the human heart not so much beating, as dancing as it keeps us tethered to this planet and this life. He didn&#;t get that from his Mormon upbringing, but he did get that immense guilt trip from it. So when he meets the ironically monikered Christian (the hunkolicious Wesley A. Ramsey), the homosexual stud next door, one things leads to another and, well, I contemplate we all recognize where it&#;s going.
And th
A movie should present its characters with a issue and then watch them solve it, not without difficulty. So says an old and reliable screenplay formula. Countless movies contain been made about a boy and a miss who have a challenge (they haven&#;t slept with each other) and after difficulties (family, war, economic, health, rival lover, silly misunderstanding) they solve it by sleeping with each other. Now we own a movie about two homosexuals that follows the same reliable convention.
Although much will be made of the fact that one of the characters in &#;Latter Days&#; is a Mormon missionary and the other is a lgbtq+ poster boy, those are simply titillating details. Examine the sub-genre of pornography in which nuns receive involved in sex. We know they&#;re not really nuns, but the costuming is supposed to insert a little spice. By the same token, Davis (Steve Sandvoss) is a Mormon only because that makes his journey from hetero- to homosexual more fraught and daring. He could have been a Presbyterian or an atheist vegan and the underlying story would have been the same: A personality who
Angels in Pocatello
The gay feature audience is still a demographic that’s looking for its story onscreen. You have to realize that, with any minority, any popular expression (if you can consider Later Days popular: there were only twenty people present when I saw it) is a statement of the whole group. It’s about our life. This is us. This is our story. It’s so crucial to see that story honestly or earnestly dealt with that quality comes second. Don’t expect this to be recognized by mainstream critics. And why should it be? They're reviewing for the mainstream, not for a specific niche starved for a public voice. In these terms Get Real or Edge of Seventeen or any other gay coming of age story that finds its way to the screen is pure gold. But in aesthetic terms – and lgbtq+ men are nothing if not tasteful – we have to recognize that Latter Days is a bit gross.
And yet on a certain level it doesn’t matter that “Latter Days” isn’t “art.” That it’s not “Madame Satã.” That it’s not even “Queer as Folk.”
The story of Latter Days is full of clichés. But those clichés s